The American political world is shocked – shocked – to discover that the CIA has been torturing some of the victims seized, kidnapped, snatched and literally sold into captivity by America's Terror Warriors. (Other captives have been tortured by the military, by hired contractors, and by various other organs of the security apparat.) This despite the fact that these tortures – including the threat to kill a captive's children – have been known for years, reported in the mainstream media and in several books by well-regard writers with highly respectable publishing houses. (I've been writing about America's torture regimen, in print and on-line, since early 2002, drawing almost entirely on these widely available sources.) None of the material now being released is "news" in the sense that it is new; but as always, it's nice to have one more source of confirmation for these already multiply-confirmed high crimes.

Of course, Barack Obama – who was forced to release some of the material by an ACLU lawsuit, and not because of his deep-rooted, progressive commitment to openness in government – has chosen to go the time-honored "rotten apples" route. Whenever a sliver of light is thrown onto the atrocities of the American power structure, our leaders – regardless of party or puported ideological stripe – always, without fail, seek out a few patsies to stitch up in show trials, to "prove" that the "system works," and can weed out the few "bad apples" who have left a tragic – but infinitely small – stain on America's unrelenting goodness. This is precisely what Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder, are doing now. Holder has announced a tepid probe into some of the possible "excesses" committed by a few CIA interrogators, while letting the true architects and perpetrators of an elaborate, deliberate, inherent system of torture get off scot-free.

Glenn Greenwald has many of the details here and here, among them the telling – and damning – fact that Obama and Holder have apparently decided that the "torture memos" prepared at the White House's order should be considered "settled law;" that is, only those agents whose tortures might have gone a bit beyond the already heinous tortures "allowed" by the White House memos are to be investigated for possible prosecution. As long as you stayed within the gruesome "guidelines" of the White House torture memos, then your atrocities are now to be considered "legal." This is yet another open reinforcement of the long-established covert practice of what we might call Nixon's Law: "If the president orders it, it cannot be illegal." As we have seen over the years, this includes the genocidal bombing of Cambodia, the waging of aggressive war in Iraq (which has murdered well over a million people), the "extrajudicial assassination" of, well, anybody the president or his designated minions care to kill; and the establishment of a world-wide gulag of torture and murder.

Greenwald also underlines a point buried deep in the newly-released Inspector General's report:

that many of the detainees who were subjected to this treatment were so treated due to "assessments that were unsupported by credible intelligence" -- meaning there was no real reason to think they had done anything wrong whatsoever.  As has been known for quite some time, many of the people who were tortured by the United States were completely innocent -- guilty of absolutely nothing.

Greenwald and those he links to lay out the facts and the implications of the latest development well. (Salon's Mark Benjamin has highlights from the actual document here.) However, I must take issue with one of his main points. Greenwald insists that all Americans should be made to learn about the tortures outlined in the IG report, so they will "know what was done in their names." The apparent implication of this is that if the people know, they will rise up and demand that the true perpetrators be punished, without fear or favor, all the way to the top. This is a noble sentiment, of course, but I'm afraid that one can only reply to it as Brick did to Maggie the Cat's protestations of her love: "Wouldn't it be something if that were true?"

For the plain fact is that "the people" out there beyond the Beltway do have a good idea of  "what's been done in their names." (As noted above, most of the damning facts about the American gulag have been in the public domain for a long time.) And for the most part they are fine with it. The Foxicated faction of the public – those tens of millions who live in Rupert Murdoch's overheated fantasy world -- enthusiastically embrace torture, of course; hell, they'd like to see more of it. To this large swathe of the public, it is the prosecuction of torture that is the atrocity.

As for the vast, amorphous, floating "center" so beloved by pundits and politicians, their reaction would largely echo Obama's own hand-picked CIA Director, Leon Panetta, who says we must be understanding of any possible "excesses" committed after 9/11, because, after all, our leaders were just doing what they felt they had to do to keep us safe in a very trying time. Maybe a few people went overboard here and there – and yes, maybe some of the policies themselves were misconceived, even foolish (like that invasion of Iraq thing) – but again, they were all undertaken in good faith, by leaders who, even if we might strongly disagree with them, were doing what they thought best for the country.

If the people have not already risen up in anger and protest at what has been done in their names, then a few more details from a heavily-censored government report dealing with only one small aspect of a massive, systemic crime is not going to move them.

As for Obama, he has always made clear his intention to avoid prosecuting his imperial forbears for anything. And he will doubtless do all he can to keep the plucking of bad apples to an absolute minimum. (That's assuming that anyone at all will actually be prosecuted as a result of the new probe.) But even the very mild measures Obama has been forced into by the ACLU lawsuit must be making him a bit nervous. After all, the last president who made noises about punishing the security apparat is now lying beneath an eternal flame in Arlington Cemetery.  These guys play for keeps.

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Sean O'Neil said:

... Maybe in another 5 years we can get a full admission from Greenwald... ...on the point that he spent the last 5 years stumping for Democrats, and when each was exposed as a fraud, blaming the exposed criminals as "bad apples," and urging election of more and better Democrats. When will Greenwald drop his arrogant pose and admit to his fawning, idiotic Salonbots that he's been lying to people for a half-decade? His technical reads on "the law" don't exempt him from this truth of being a leading liar on behalf of The Mighty Donkle. And his technical reads on "the law" are hardly better than those of a 1st year law student at Blind Justice Mail Order Academy. Seems to me there's a better way to discuss these issues -- without reference to Greenwald.

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August 25, 2009
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Ilya Kuryakin said:

Why would anyone expect The Messiah to be any different? Back in the day, as we say, before the "internets", we were just as informed then, via short-wave radio, as anyone is today. Probably moreso! On a few occasions we actually spoke with Soviet cosmonauts in orbit - nevermind the rest. Before the media takeover we had actual real live "journalists" who were actually published in widely-read newspapers and magazines...I am entirely convinced, despite the internet today, that we - I mean Real, Actual, Progressives - were far mor informed then than we are now. One look of DailyKos or HuffPo should convince you of that! The US-sponsored and-or conducted ritual torture of "enemies of Imperialism" is nothing new. It has been on-going in Central and South America since the first commercially available banana was consumed by an American citizen. SE Asia? The Philippines? America has been torturing people - officially - for at least 100 years. They did nothing about it then, and they will do nothing about it now. That is Wisdom.

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August 25, 2009 | url
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Michael Hureaux said:

... I don't know how much better informed we were before the Internet, Ilya, but it does seem to me that there have been brief periods in this country's history when people didn't sit quite so passively through this sort of revelation. Out here in Seattle, "progressives" will counter this kind of information with the phrase "I know all about it, I listen to national public radio.". As if media in any form were entirely neutral,or as though NPR hasn't undergone massive changes since the Carter and Reagan restoration. I've known communist party activists who weren't anywhere near as dogmatic as your average corporate liberal. It's really something to be witness to.

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August 25, 2009
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BILL LAWRENCE said:

	... If the excuse being offered up for the criminal activities of the torturers and those who ordered the torture is an overreaction to 9/11 why not have a truth commission and have all of them, right up to the president, plead temporary insanity.
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August 25, 2009
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Glenn Greenwald said:

... I must take issue with one of his main points. Greenwald insists that all Americans should be made to learn about the tortures outlined in the IG report, so they will "know what was done in their names." The apparent implication of this is that if the people know, they will rise up and demand that the true perpetrators be punished, without fear or favor, all the way to the top. Chris - That's not the implication of what I wrote, and it's certainly not what I intended to suggest. I wasn't implying -- and I don't definitely believe -- that all Americans, or even most, would be horrified if they knew what was done. I know full well from my email inbox alone that this isn't the case. My point is that if Americans want to justify torture and defend the torturers, they should at least have to know what they're protecting -- not be able to take refuge in the soothing, propagandistic myth that "all we did was pour some water down the nose of 3 Terrorists."

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August 25, 2009
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Ovid said:

... Chris, I think that whether Obama has a "deep-rooted, progressive commitment to openness in government" is an entirely hypothetical question, because he knows what we actually have, which is a national security state. I suspect he wishes we didn't have that, though hell if I know what he wishes. Does it matter? That's what we have. Does he ask himself how much he can do about it? I hope so. That seems to to me to be part of the tepidness and vacillation and retreat from campaign statements that's been going on. At least that's my interpretation. I could be wrong about that. Obama without question knows what you say at the end of your post--"these guys play for keeps." He has written about his and his mother's time in Indonesia, after the CIA slaughter of the PKU and their families and friends and friends' families and friends, amounting to half a million or more people. Obama has recognized that was facilitated by Langley, so he doesn't really need to have an opinion about JFK or RFK or MLK or Malcolm X or the October Surprises or 911 or false flag terrorism or any of that to know what the CIA and the hardliners in the military are capable of, in moral terms, when they think the national security of the United States is even indirectly at stake. He understands that. But I don't actually think that's really so significant at the moment. He hasn't had a Bay of Pigs or Cuban Missile Crisis, and there isn't any indication that he thinks the military has come completely unhinged, let alone that he's going to war with the military over anything. He's at best acting as a brake on them, but hardly an emergency brake. We'll see if he can even pull off the withdrawal from Iraq--I'll be surprised. What I think truly restrains Obama is much less dramatic, but no less conspiratorial, than the possibility of assassination. The military and the intel agencies and their Wall Street sponsors hold nearly all the good political cards. Together they essentially control Congress, especially the Senate, and they can create all sorts of trouble for Obama. The administration of President Carter is almost a case study in how someone who decides to go to war with Langley can get killed politically without getting placed beneath an eternal flame. Chase Manhattan played a big role in Carter's downfall (see Interlock by Mark Hulbert), but "the Langley boys" certainly did too after Carter decided to fire much of the operations staff. And more happened to Carter than just the arms-for-not-releasing-the-hostages October Surprise, though that's certainly enough, and has now been confirmed by several memoirs, as Kevin Phillips has noted in American Dynasty. There are many ways to cause trouble for a President. So I don't think Obama is going to put many chips on any square that equates to tangling with the national security bureaucracy, military, or intel community. Nobody has won that fight since JFK had his head blown off. So if you were Obama, would you fight that particular fight? And if you would, would it be just on principle, or because you really thought it would work out? I know my answers, but I'm not telling.

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August 25, 2009
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John Floyd said:

	When? Are you gonna pay me back that $800 you borrowed two years ago? Stop taking advantage of your family!
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August 25, 2009
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DeanTaylor said:

...and Robert Jackson and Telford Taylor are spinning in their graves. our prevenient "apples"...(from DemocracyNow): "Calley Apologizes for 1968 My Lai Massacre" "Over forty-one years after the My Lai Massacre, when US troops killed more than 500 men, women and children in Vietnam, the former Army lieutenant who was convicted for his role in the killings has publicly apologized. William Calley was the only US soldier held legally responsible for the slayings. He was convicted on twenty-two counts of murder, and his sentence was later commuted by President Reagan. Last week, William Calley publicly apologized for the first time, saying, “There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai." He added that he had been FOLLOWING ORDERS" [stress added]. * * * * * "It looks like a bloodbath down there! What the hell is going on?" —Hugh C. Thompson, a helicopter pilot hovering over My Lai For heroically landing his helicopter between rampaging Americal-Division infantrymen ("let's go kill us some Gooks") and non-combatant (read: women and children) My Lai villagers Thompson was excoriated by the DC war-monger/"patriots" for what amounts to putting "our boys" in a bad light: "In late 1969, Thompson was summoned to Washington DC and appeared before a special closed hearing of the House Armed Services Committee. There, he was sharply criticized by Congressmen, in particular Chairman Mendel Rivers (D-SC), who were anxious to play down allegations of a massacre by American troops. Rivers publicly stated that he felt Thompson was the only soldier at My Lai who should be punished (for turning his weapons on fellow American troops) and unsuccessfully attempted to have him court-martialed." In a comprehensive indictment of the activities of the infamous Americal Division, infantryman Tom Glen cited Americal's ongoing record of atrocities to Milhous' commander of military operations, Creighton Abrams, to which then 31-year-old Army Major Colin Powell solemnly intoned: "In direct refutation of this portrayal is the fact that relations between soldiers and the Vietnamese people are excellent" [!]. DC/Pentagon agents of policy in Viet Nam (e.g., "we want high body counts...") hung out to dry just one perpetrator of My Lai terror ("but, let me make one thing perfectly clear: we want it known that he was THE one rotten apple," i.e., you may now safely halt further inquiry...), thus saving their own malevolent carcasses--and all-important careers. http://www.democracynow.org/2009/8/24/calley_apologizes_for_1968_my_lai http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai

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August 26, 2009
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DeanTaylor said:

who knows? who cares--that's who knows... Glenn Greenwald: "Every American should be forced to read and learn this in order to know what was done in their names..." People who need to be "forced" to read this (i.e., the reading of the IG report ought to be insisted upon), it would seem, already have their minds made up, with their cherished notions of US exceptionalism secured beyond the scrutiny of..well...facts, for example. "For the plain fact is that 'the people' out there beyond the Beltway do have a good idea of 'what's been done in their names.'" Yes. And, for those benighted yahoos out in the hinterlands, for example, who are truly oblivious to what has been going on here in Empire--e.g., My Lai--well, Glenn, you'd probably have to read the IG report to them--but, slowly please. "My point is that if Americans want to justify torture and defend the torturers, they should at least have to know what they're protecting..." "They" know. They "knew" about the fascist's camps during the forties, they "knew" about napalm used in South Viet Nam, they "knew" about White Phosphorous used in Gaza during Cast Lead, they "know" about drone attacks on Afghani wedding parties. The ones that profess ignorance--i.e., culpable ignorance?--do not, in fact, care. You, Glenn, and Chris, and Scott Horton, et al., "know" only because you cared enough to acquire the facts, and disseminate said facts--and, thanks to one and all for doing so. I believe the operative term here is "empathy."

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August 26, 2009
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Chris Floyd said:

	... I've seen some stupid trolling jobs before, but "John Floyd" takes the cake. Given up political debate, have we, and are moving on to attempted character assassination? Unfortunately, the only "John" in my Floyd family is a 4-year-old. You should have tried, "You heartless brute! You abandoned me and our love child! Love, Rowena."
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August 26, 2009
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scott douglas said:

	'does it' ? does what? Chris, you give Mr. Milhous Nixon altogether too much credit when you distill his vision of executive power into an actual maxim! I think we should stick with the exact quote, in it's altogether more brutish locution: "When the President does it, that means it is not illegal."
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August 26, 2009
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mjose said:

The People and the Torture State There are some provocative sociological assertions in this essay, linking "the people" with acts of governmental torture. That is a large and risible topic, and of course no one essay or approach will satisfy the dimensions of this problem, but I hold to a more supersystemic view. Humans beings can profess to "care" and hold opinions and wishes and dreams, but our actions are circumscribed by our inherited social worlds. What protests against torture did you expect? What mass revulsion against war and violence do you anticipate in Peoria? If the global neo-liberal structure concentrates power in the hands of the central and commanding elites, why look to the disenfranchised worker drones for collective rebellion? I have belabored this mode of analysis in the comments section here, and it never ceases to annoy just about everyone. Yet I look at Dean Taylor's staggering quote from Colin Powell as a young bureaucrat bound for imperial greatness, and I wonder how feckless my nihilism is. These people have been doing the torture and violence dance for hundreds of years, and they keep getting better weapons and bigger book contracts. I do feel allied with the perspectives displayed by the recurring voices here, though I do think I'd be voted off the island. Of course, this website is not about me, I am a very occasional and tangential voice here, and I understand the human need for positive direction, but what in the last year of "change" gives anybody the slightest impression of anti-imperial momentum?

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August 26, 2009
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KISS said:

Not so fast with the blame I, for one, did protest and like Vietnam, there were many of us that were angry. But what of the media? What of the cowardly congress? What of a Supreme Court so lacking in Jurisprudence? All law enforcement agencies from local cops to NSA and FBI, who took the oath to uphold the Constitution, and did nothing as it was corrupted by our elected. The torture is even on Main Street in the form of Tasering..and not much is said. When Big media is bought off the citizens have very little recourse.

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August 26, 2009
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John Flyger said:

	... i can't believe Rowena has to take this kind of abuse.
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August 26, 2009
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Ilya Kuryakin said:

Complaining about torture is now officially passé. As KISS states above, legal torture is now a routine affair, practiced by "local" cops. Here in the formerly sovereign Kanada, several people have been tasered to death this year, and I understand the problem is far worse in Yankistan. "Local policing" is a thing of the past - you remember the days when walking down Broadway with a beer or mickey in a paper bag was kosher? Hell, on many of my frequent visits to NYC, even the beat cops carried paper bags. Today, they call in fucking SWAT on your ass. You're lucky to escape with just a visit to the ER. This always happens when Empires implode, their true tyrannical nature manifests itself for all to see. Their hubris exceeds their rationality and, thus, they collapse. ¡ojalá, sooner rather than later!

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Sean O'Neil said:

Ovid's mad fantasy What I think truly restrains Obama is much less dramatic, but no less conspiratorial, than the possibility of assassination. The military and the intel agencies and their Wall Street sponsors hold nearly all the good political cards. Together they essentially control Congress, especially the Senate, and they can create all sorts of trouble for Obama. The administration of President Carter is almost a case study in how someone who decides to go to war with Langley can get killed politically without getting placed beneath an eternal flame. Chase Manhattan played a big role in Carter's downfall (see Interlock by Mark Hulbert), but "the Langley boys" certainly did too after Carter decided to fire much of the operations staff. And more happened to Carter than just the arms-for-not-releasing-the-hostages October Surprise, though that's certainly enough, and has now been confirmed by several memoirs, as Kevin Phillips has noted in American Dynasty. There are many ways to cause trouble for a President. So I don't think Obama is going to put many chips on any square that equates to tangling with the national security bureaucracy, military, or intel community. Nobody has won that fight since JFK had his head blown off. So if you were Obama, would you fight that particular fight? And if you would, would it be just on principle, or because you really thought it would work out? The only problem with Ovid's statements above -- there's no proof Obama is a noble soul trying to do what's proper, correct, legal, ethical, moral, humane. No proof whatever. So Ovid is talking about a Fantasy Obama. Which is both irrelevant to our situation, and criminally misleading... criminally misleading because it helps delude the gullible into thinking Obama is on "our side" but is being scared into playing for "their side." Ovid doesn't realize that Obama never has been on anyone's side but Obama's side, and therefore Obama will be a lackey for "their side" because "they" pay better than we do. Of course, this sort of realism is painful for those who worship Hopey McChange.

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August 26, 2009
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scott douglas said:

Hopey McChange - now THAT's funny! Sean, a young adult actually asked me to explain what was happening with the health care initiative in Congress, last week. After my hiddeous and bitter recount of the ongoing sell-out, the nice young woman said: 'well, i know the president has our best interests at heart and i am sure everything will be OK.' Yeah. And why did I waste my breath on you, kiddie? What'a'ya'gonna'do?

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August 26, 2009
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Sean O'Neil said:

keep worshiping Hopey McChange ...that's what the young Obamanauts and the older Obamabots will do, Scott. They'll keep worshiping their Obamessiah because he is like the Angel Obamoroni here to create a new religion with a bunch of Obamormons who slavishly follow the Book of Obamormon. There will be Jack Obamormons who vote for Obama and support him while mildly disagreeing with a few things that Obama may do... but ultimately their religious faith will keep them steering on the course toward Obamania. It's a fucking cult, and we can't deprogram en masse. So we're stuck with the deluded jerks. And that sucks.

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August 27, 2009
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